"A Continuous Present": Examining the "Autobiographical Acts" of Nineteenth Century Diarist Emily Hawley Gillespie

Abstract

 Characterized as “writing that has no audience” (Gannett 2), women’s diaries, journals and letters were dismissed for centuries as “private” and non-literary simply because they did not follow the same patterns as traditional autobiography. French theorist Philippe Lejeune defines autobiography as a “retrospective narrative in prose that someone makes of his own existence when he puts the principle accent on his life, especially on his own personality” (qtd. in Smith & Watson 1). Susan Stanford Friedman proposes that these ideas of what constitutes autobiography are inherently Western, individualistic, and male-centered—invariably caused the writing of women, minorities, or any non-Western author to be ignored (35-36). A traditional image of “achievement and quest” controlled the form and study of autobiography for centuries (Braham 56). Yet for many outside the identity construct of the individualistic white male, the locus of identity formation is established within relationship. Using the nineteenth-century diary of Iowan, Emily Hawley Gillespie, I will argue that diary writings of women can be as much an autobiographical act as traditionally understood autobiographies.